If you are looking for a strange thing to do, one option is to read something about an uncommon subject. I read several kinds of apparently bizarre philosophies -- e.g., Hans Veihinger’s Philosophy of As-If --, or even truly odd ones, like those of sports, film or whatever else you wouldn’t expect to find comprised in a serious philosophical book. Reading Jerome Neu’s book about insults it is such an astonishing experience that I have no idea what one can say about after reading it once.

Perhaps I should say that there is a very interesting thought exercise which should be practiced by an educated person once in a while: that of taking a bland act or a simple thing -- politeness, ashtray, dullness, bottle, pain-expressing, door and so on, not to speak about an insult! --, then developing the taxonomy, logic and principles of its origins, meanings, employments, etc. One shouldn’t smile until such a test is completed. At first it seems easy, then things get worse, and eventually the attempt is put aside, in most of the cases. That’s why I think every successful endeavor of this kind should be praised, even if it is one focused on a salient deed like insult (in the common social circumstances).

After a short introduction into the matter -- what is an insult and what it takes to feel insulted -- Neu gives us an intricate study of a strange essence: a set of ethno-anthropo-cultural observations, carefully selected and weaved in the body of the work, completed by exercises of deep thought. There are also lots of very actual examples, like the case of Barack Obama confounded with a valet-parking attendant, or the baroque cluster of events connected with the “Muslim clash” so pregnantly perceived in the beginning of this century. It should be mentioned also that the gamut of quoted authors deemed helpful for this field’s inquiry goes from Aristotle to Shakespeare, to Freud and to… 50 Cent (obviously, not for the same reasons), and there is also a broad range of -- individual or collective, more or less fictional -- characters mentioned in the book.

I cannot say too much here, but the least I can tell -- hoping to make the reader pay attention to the book -- is that there is a difference between feeling insulted and properly feeling insulted and also between feeling insulted and being insulted. Insults can be unintentional, or there may be cases when someone is not feeling insulted. There are a lot of things (honor, joke, etiquette, ritual, hate, sexual drive, abuse etc.) involved in the matter, and there are lots of things triggered by the insult. Laugh, for example, though it is not the right thing to do no matter the situation. Moreover, insults are present, at list at the conceptual level, in the law. Mere words (“sticks and stones my break my bones, but words will never hurt me”) can have unwanted consequences, or can be rendered as evidence in front of a court. Conducts and attitudes are often linked with words, and it is not easy to determine what counts from the legal point of view.

And, of course, there has to be something problematic in this book. In my opinion, the problem here is that the author is too chaste. He hardly speculates on the fringe of the subject, seldom overcomes the sobriety of academic treatment of the subject (even if sometimes the language gets quiet dirty for a pious character), and -- alas! -- abstain himself from preaching.

The above paragraph is not intended as an insult, but of course, we won’t know if the author will consider it as such or not until he reacts. I’m joking, of course -- not insultingly, I hope. Bottom-line, I may say that this is a remarkable book, connected with more disciplines that the author probably thought. It may be very useful for judges and lawyers, ethicists and psychologists, and many other categories -- why not for the street and gangsta rappers, too: after all, what’s wrong with the inclusion of Shakespeare’s “insult kit” in your vocabulary? It would denote a gain of wit and a loss of violence.

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